Sony Vegas Pro 13 Review

Sony Vegas Pro 13 Review & Comparison

Sony Vegas Pro 13 just came out a couple days ago. You can view the product page here.

Sony Creative has a reputation of releasing new versions of their popular video editing suite Sony Vegas Pro without making many significant changes. For the a while, Sony Vegas 9 or 10 was the preferred version of YouTubers, as it was more stable and just as updated as later versions. Personally I switched to 12 for the better rendering options and GPU leveraging support. However, I've had the worst luck with mid-render crashes with 12, so maybe that wasn't the best of ideas.

Does Sony Vegas Pro 13 provide a reason to upgrade beyond the version you're currently using?

My initial impressions so far say no.

What's New?

I'd technically be lying if I said nothing was new in Sony Vegas Pro 13, but there isn't much for those who make YouTube videos.

Vegas Pro Connect

One of the new features is a collaborative and review workflow that they're calling Vegas Pro Connect. From the product page:

To meet the collaboration challenge on video productions, Vegas Pro Connect replaces tedious written spreadsheets and notes with efficient online and offline review workflows. The app provides a comprehensive review system within a gesture-driven control surface and represents a genuine breakthrough in project collaboration and control.

Basically this is a project collaboration and review tool that works on iPad and offline. For professionals using Sony Vegas, this would be a convenient feature for big, collaborative projects, but for individuals - or anyone without an iPad (Android for life) - it will never be used.

Project Archiving

Sony Vegas Pro 13 has an updated Export menu (located under File -> Export) with new capabilities such as exporting to Premiere/After Effects *.prproj files (that actually work) with all of the used media copied to the save location, and exporting as a Vegas Project Archive (*.veg) for archiving or nesting projects in other projects.

The project nesting feature could be a pretty cool concept if it works properly. One of the things that Adobe Premiere Pro has over Sony Vegas is it's multiple sequences that you can nest and edit individually. Project nesting can simulate that to a degree.

I plan on doing a Tutorial on this later, and will update with a link here.

Others

Loudness Meters to measure and tweak audio dynamic range, new video plugins and codec support - a variety of other smaller updates have been included, but the majority of these will never be noticed by the average user.

How's it Look?

Disappointingly, Sony Vegas Pro 13 looks exactly the same as Sony Vegas Pro 12, and in many ways to 11. While keeping a consistent interface is important to user convenience and ease of use, keeping the exact same UI will lead to users, like myself, wondering why a new release was necessary at all.

The icon and splash screen have, of course, changed, but that's about it.

Problems

Sony Vegas software has a awful reputation of just outright not liking some peoples' video files. Vegas Pro 13 is no different.

As a gamer and a YouTuber, much of the video footage I work with is recorded with the software Dxtory for game capture and with the Ut Video Codec.

Sony Vegas Pro 13 refuses to import these video files. I'm not sure what is directly causing the crash, but every time I try to import any of my Dxtory video files, it just crashes. Sony Vegas Pro 12 has no problem with them, however.

The Verdict

If you are not in the professional video field and use Sony Vegas primarily for all of your video editing and production needs, I would recommend steering away from Sony Vegas Pro 13 for now. All initial Sony Vegas releases are typically pretty buggy, and this one is buggy in the worst way with regards to my Dxtory footage.

There are a few neat features in this new release, but they will not relate to most average users.

You can find out more and purchase Sony Vegas Pro 13 here.